This is another one of those moments when we need to pause to recognize what the first glimmerings of transformation look like.

Exhibit A:Rockford Sharefest, which last week provided a makeover to key parts of the city’s downtown. This year’s Sharefest, which mobilized scores of volunteers, focused on downtown beautification and upgrades to Roosevelt Alternative High School.

Rockford Sharefest has been transforming the community since 2007, when Heartland Community Church, 1280 S. Alpine Road, created the Sharefest Schools Project to refurbish Rockford public school buildings.

The idea to push the effort into downtown was the brain child of Sharefest volunteers who helped decorate for last year’s winter holiday celebration, Stroll on State, which drew in the neighborhood of 30,000 people downtown for shopping, caroling and other holiday activities.

Last week, the work centered on lamp posts, planters, benches, sidewalks and general curb appeal from East State and Third streets to the Rock River.

The Sharefest crews weren’t the only ones at work in the community, however.

Also getting their hands dirty last week were members of Project 10:13, the massive neighborhood cleanup project led by Rock Church, 6732 Harrison Ave. The project takes its name from this verse in Matthew’s Gospel: “If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it. If it is not, let your peace return to you.”

About 180 Project 10:13 volunteers from Rockford, Freeport, Durand, Dakota, Chicago and Duluth, Minnesota, spent four days cleaning up properties in a west side neighborhood. They did everything from mowing lawns and trimming bushes to demolishing dilapidated sheds.

It’s not unreasonable to assume that some of these volunteers, even the ones from Rockford proper, could have chosen a sexier outlet for their altruism. An Indian reservation out West, for example. Or Haiti, where reconstruction continues after the 2010 earthquake. Or Africa, where water and school-building projects lure lots of American do-gooders.

But they chose to invest their time and sweat in Rockford. They must see something of value in us.

So why is the work of these volunteers so important?

We can think of a number of reasons beyond the obvious. After all, who doesn’t like it when the street outside his workplace is tidy, with gleaming lamp posts and tidy flower boxes? Or when the fence around her house has a fresh coat of paint and the lawn neatly groomed?

Perhaps most important, the volunteers are injecting dignity into corners of the city where that quality has been absent. Register Star reporter Chris Green talked to a woman named Matricia Walker, who rents a house on Blaisdell Street and who helped the volunteers turn her backyard, which she had been afraid of using, into a place where Walker now dreams of planting a vegetable garden.

Page 2 of 2 - “They should call themselves The Church of We Get It Done,” Walker said of the Project 10:13 crew. “I’m grateful.” (As are we — after watching Sharefest volunteers spruce up the street outside the News Tower. Makes us feel good about working downtown.)

It’s going to take a lot more hard work, coupled with a little luck, perhaps, to transform Rockford into the city we want it to be. But thanks to volunteers from Sharefest and Project 10:13, we’re feeling hopeful.